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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf . G 



UNIiED STATES OF AMERICA. 




■I- ]{ 6er]tury of I]atioi]al Life. -I* 



:A THANKSGIVING SERMON 



•) BY (- 



HENRY MELVILLE KING, D. D. 



A Century of National Life. 



A THANKSGIVING SERMON 



HENRY MELVILLE KING. D. D. 



DELIVERED AT A 



Union Service of Baptist Churches, 



HELD IN THE 



- TABERNACLE BAPTIST CHURCH, 



ALBANY, N. Y., 



nsrOATEJS/LBES^ 29tl3., ISSS. 



PRINTED BY REQUEST. 




"^Cotwkuv^^^ 



ALBANY, N. T. : 

RIGOS PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1888. 



<J- 



'fji 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 



Psalm 100:3-5. "Know ye th;it the Lord He is God; it is He that hath 
made us, and not we ourselves; we ate his people and the sheep of his 
pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into liis courts with 
praise; be thankful unto Him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; 
his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations." 

Whether we look at ourselves this mornnig as members 
of separate families or churches, or as citizens of this great 
American Republic, this recognition of our dependence 
upon God, this ascription of i^raise to Him for his unceas- 
ing goodness, and tliis summons to grateful worship are 
equally appropriate. 

The year 1776 is called the birth year of this nation, 
because in that year the remarkable document which de- 
clared "that these united colonies are, and of right ought 
to be, free and independent States," was adopted and pro- 
claimed to the Avorld. But the "confederation" at first 
entered into, had about it little of the authority, dignity or 
unity necessary to command the respect of otiier nations, 
or even to self-jireservation. Congress was not authorized 
to compel obedience to any law, to raise money by tax- 
ation, or to fix the rates of duties on imported goods. 
Being afraid tliat the central government would be tyranni- 
cal, the States had conferred upon it little power to govern 



at all. The weakness and insecurity of such a Union 
became more and more apparent to thoughtful minds. 
Washington said: " We are one nation to-day, and thirteen 
to-morrow; who will treat with us on these terms i:" 

Ten years after the Declaration of Independence, in Sep- 
tember, 1786, a convention called to frame a constitution 
met at Annapolis. Only live States were represented, and 
no action was taken. The next year a second convention 
was called for the same purx)ose in Philadelphia, and 
remained in session from May until Sei^tember. Eleven 
States (all except New Hampshire and Rhode Island) were 
represented. Washington, a delegate from Virginia, was 
the i)resident of the convention. Radical differences in 
sentiment were disclosed. "The adherents, respectively, 
of the idea of a strong central government and of State 
supremacy, were apparently irreconcilably antagonistic."^ 
The delegates from New York were Robert Yates, John 
Lansing, Jr., and Alexander Hamilton— the last, one of the 
most remarkable men of his day, who wielded a controll- 
ing influence in the convention. Yates and Lansing were 
earnest for the doctrine of State supremacj'^, and Hamilton 
as earnestly advocated a strong Federal Government. The 
first two, finding the sentiment of the convention against 
them, withdrew. The vieAvs of Hamilton prevailed, and 
after a session of four months a Constitution was framed — 
the one under which (with some amendments) the Republic 
has ever since been governed — which unified the thirteen 
loosely-jointed States into a comj^act nationality, and may 
be said to have consummated the birth of the American 
Republic. It is of this document, then framed, that the 
most eminent living statesman of England, and of the 
world, has said : "The American Constitution is, as far as 



I can see, the most wonderfulwork ever struck cff at a 
given time, by the brain and purpose of man." 

And Sir Henry Maine, a distinguished writer on Political 
Economy — who cannot be charged with a prejudice in favor 
of Democracy, but rather the reverse— speaking of onr 
Constitution, makes the following favorable comment: 
"The powers and disabilities attached to the United States 
and to the several States by the Federal Constitution, and 
placed under the protection of the deliberately contrived 
securities we have described, have determined the whole 
course of American history. That history began, as all its 
records abundantly show, in a condition of society pro- 
duced by war and revolution, which might have condemned 
tlie great northern Republic to a fate not unlike that of her 
disorderly sisters in South America. But the provisions of 
the Constitntion have acted on her like those dams and 
dykes which strike the eye of the traveller along the 
Rhine, controlling the course of a mighty river which be- 
gins amid mountain torrents, and turning it into one of 
the most equable waterways in the world." 

The work of the convention having been so admirably 
accomplished, only one thing more was necessary, viz., the 
ratification of the Constitution by the requisite number of 
States. The New York convention, called for this i)ur- 
pose, met at Poughkeepsie, June 17, 1788, the body of dele- 
gates being nearly equally divided in their sentiments as to 
the merits of the proposed Constitutiop. While they were 
in session, the news came that New Hampshire had ratified 
the Constitution, which made the requisite number of 
States, and settled the question. At length, on the 28th of 
July, after a remarkable sfjeech of three hours by Alexan- 
der Hamilton, New York gave its vote in the affirmative — 



tlie vote standing thirty to twenty-seven, a majoritj' of 
three. This action was in season to enable New York to 
Ijarticipate in the first Presidential election, one hundred 
years ago. 

We stand to-daj^, then, at what may be called the cen- 
tennial of tlje Republic, for not until 1788, when the 
Constitution became the supreme and unifying law of the 
States, did the nation trul}' emerge into being, and enter 
upon its career as a distinct and unique nationality, hav- 
ing in view not only the development- of the material 
resources of this vast continent, but the illustration on 
this western shore of those x:)rinciples of popular govern- 
ment and human freedom, toward which all nations and 
all history' and all j^rogress, impelled b}^ the enlightening 
influences of the Christian religion, had been slowdy but 
surely tending. 

We may w^ell pause on this centennial Thanksgiving, 
and take a vieAV as comprehensive as we can of the marvel- 
lous increase and the present magnitude of the nation 
which God has given to us for an inheritance, and whose 
destiny He has, to some extent, put in tiie hands of this 
generation. The youngest born has alreadj^ become great 
among the nations of the earth, and bids fair to outstrip 
them all. The original thirteen States have become thirty- 
eight, with several Territories knocking for admission into 
the equal sisterhood. Our poiDuhition, by natural increase 
and immigration, has nearly doubled each twenty years 
during the last sixty years, and the three millions of a 
hundred years ago have rounded up into sixty millions 
to-day. 

If w^e look at the physical basis of empire, what do we 
find? A territory measuring more than 3,600,000 square 



miles; or, if we subtract Alaska, about 3,()0(),000 square 
miles.* This area is, according to Ritter, nearly equal to 
tlie entire continent of Europe witli its dozen kingdoms, 
great and small. It ivould make eighteen States as large 
as Spain, thirty-one as large as Italy, and sixty as large as 
England and Wales. Should you take live of the six first- 
class powers of Europe, viz.: England, France, German}', 
Austria and Italy, and add Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, 
Denmark and Greece, you could lay three such emj)ires 
west of the Hudson river without their overlapping each 
other. New York was once called the Empire State; and 
although, on account of its five millions of population it 
still seems to be the pivot on which the national election 
turns, it cannot long remain such, and in point of area it 
has long since lost its proud distinction, and dropped into 
the minority. There are twenty-eight States and Territories 
that exceed New York in size. California contains more 
than three times as many square miles, and Texas nearly 
six times as many. Mr. Gladstone has said that the United 
States furnish " the natural base for the greatest continuous 
Empire ever established by man." Its territory spans the 
continent, and has an ocean front on either side of thou- 
sands of miles which put it into commercial relations with 
all the nations of the earth. And this territory, though so 
vast, is bound together by bands of iron, and its remotest 
edges are made contiguous by steam and electricity. 
California is not so distant from Maine to-day as was New 
York a hundred years ago. Within twenty-four hours 
after a national election has taken place, the result is accu- 

* In addition to the Census Reports of the United States, I would acknowl- 
edge my indebtedness to Mr. Carnegie's ' ' Triumphant Democracy," and Dr. 
Josiah Slrong's "Our Country," whose statistics and comparisons I have 
freely used. 



rately known from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific slope. 
The lake S3'stem on the north gives us virtually another 
ocean frontage, and the mighty river courles, uni^aralleled 
in any continent, are the providential arteries along which 
the throbbing, increasing life of the nation maj- flow with- 
out interruption. Counting no stream whose length is less 
than a hundred miles, our country has forty thousand 
miles of river flow to seventeen thousand in Europe. A 
river steamer may make a continuous voj'^age from the 
Gulf of Mexico into the heart of the country 3,900 miles, 
"as far as from New York to Constantinople." 

There can be no question but that the seat of empire, in 
this vast country, is to be in the West, which, a few years 
ago, was an untravelled wilderness, but is novv rapidly 
oiDening to our astonished vision. Of twenty-two States and 
Territories west of the Mississippi, only three are as small 
as the whole of New England. Montana would stretch 
from Boston to Cleveland westward, and southward as far 
as Richmond ; Idaho from Toronto to Raleigh ; California 
from Massachusetts to the southern boundary of South 
Carolina, and Texas has a maximum measurement as great 
as the distance from New Orleans to Chicago, or from 
Chicago to Boston, or from Norway to the Mediterranean 
sea. Texas exceeds, by 62,000 square miles, the whole 
German empire, by 70,000 France, and by nearly 100,000 
Sjoain. 

All along the course of history populations have moved 
westward ; to use the words of De Tocqville, "as if driven 
by the mighty hand of God." This has been from nation 
to nation, and from land to land. Within the limits of 
this new world, equal to many lands in extent — and already 
the receptacle and arena of all nations — a new illustration 



of tills historic fact is being furnished. Tlie great West, 
with its ahiiost unlimited opportunities and its marvellous 
resources and productiveness, is desdned to be occupied by 
a busy and aggressive people, both native and foreign-born, 
and in wealth, as well as population, to dominate the nation. 
The silence of ages is disturbed on every hand by the axe 
of the pioneer; the |)lo\v is turning the virgin soil into 
furrows, along which the golden harvest is marching like 
an army of conquest ; the villages of yesterday are munici- 
palities to-day, and the solitudes of our great West are 
throbbing with the life of the increasing millions. 

The single State of Illinois, it is said, could sustain a 
XK)pulation of 20,000,000. The present population of the 
whole country could live and be comfortably supported 
within the limits of Texas, and the x>opi^lation not be as 
dense as in GermanJ^ Indeed, Texas, such are its extent 
and its fertility, could have produced all our food crops 
last year, and the world's supply of cotton (12,000,000 
bales), and had: a cattle ranch left larger than the State 
of New York. In 1879, this country fed its population 
of 50,000,000, and exported nearly 300,000,000 bushels of 
grain, and yet we are told that the crops could have been 
doubled on the same soil. China has an area less than half 
that of the United States, and supports a population of 
400,000,000. 

Our country, it is estimated, is capable from its agricul- 
ture of feeding a population of a thousand millions, and 
from its mining and manufactures of enriching them all. 

Our mineral products are of uriequaled richness and 
variety. We already produce one-half the gold and silver 
of the world's supply. In a single decade (from 1870 lo 
1880) tlie yield amounted to $732,000,000. 



Our manufactures easily lead the world in amount. In 
1880, they exceeded those of Great Britain by $650,()0(),000, 
and have been increasing with a rapidity Cwice as great as 
hers. In their charactei- and merit, the progress is still 
more marked. Tiie imitativt-ness and inventive genius of 
our countrymen areattracting the attention of other nations. 
Our government issues, annuall}', four times as man^' pat- 
ents as the English government — 20,297 in a single year, 
1884. 

Our sewing machines, our sleeping cais, and our pianos 
and organs, are finding a ready market in the old world. 
The past century has been one of nn])aralleled progress 
among all nations, in the arts, in the sciences, in all things 
that conduce to man's comfort and growth, that widen the 
bounds of his knowledge, and make him moie lelined in 
peace and more terrible in war. 

It is but little more thnn a century since street lamps 
were introduced in London, since the steam engine was 
patented by Watt, and since Aikwright began the manu- 
facture of cotton cloth by spindles and looms moved by 
water-power. It is less than a century since Galvani dis- 
covered the science that has given us the wonder-working- 
telegraph. Within the memoiy of men still vigorous, the 
first steam vessel crossed the Atlantic, and it is hardly 
sixty years since Stevenson's " licK'ket " started into being 
the smoking, screaming locomotives, which are winding 
their serpentine way across all continents, and streaking all 
skies with their black, but evanescent clouds. 

In all this progress our nation has had its share, and with 
it all it has kept pace. Between tlie oceans which wash 
our shores stretch half the railroad tracks in the world. 
Our expositions at home and our contributions to those 

10 



abroad have excited the amazement and admiration of 
other nations, and have given ns rank witli all for enter- 
prise and skill, for the ingenuity and variety of our 
inventions, for the excellence and abundance of our useful 
manufactures, and for our respectable attainments even in 
the fine arts. An observing Frenchman visiting this 
country twelve years ago wrote to the Reime des Deux 
Mondes ixs ioWow^: "America can feed Europe with corn, 
wheat, preserved meats and live stock as it has supplied it 
with cotton; it has clothed Europe, and it can nourish 
Europe."" "America will learn more and more how to get 
along withfut Europe, but Europe will not be able to get 
along without her. It is tYwly a new England which is 
rising across the seas, and which already threatens the old 
England in all her markets. The commercial interests of 
France are also threatened." " But wliat is still graver, is 
the fact that the Americans are getting hold of the pro- 
cesses, the sleight-of-hand of our workmen. Already in 
the manufacturing of jewelry, watches, bronzes, furniture 
and artificial flowers they produce an article wdiich bears 
the real stamp of solidity and good taste." " Switzerland 
is already in a state of agitation over the success of Ameri- 
can watches. In carriage making, cabinet work, glass work 
and pottery the United States is almost the peer of France 
and the other great nations. In o.ther things the}'- have 
got ahead of us; and all this in spite of the high price of 
labor. It may be said that we are their instructors and 
masters, as Italy was ours at the Renaissance, and they are 
destined to surpass ns some day as we did the Italians. 
Venice, Milan and Florence tanght us formerly how to melt 
glass, to weave silk and velvet, and soon we got ahead of 
them. Will the same thing happen to us in respect to the 
United States T' , — ~ — ■ 



These words of frank confession were written twelve 
years ago. America lias not been sleeping since then. We 
send our steel to Sheffield, our cotton fabric^ to Manchester, 
our watches in increasing number to Geneva, our agricul- 
tural implements to Austialia, and our petroleum to India 
and China. At the late International Electrical Exposition 
in Paris, five gold medals were issued, all of which came to 
this country. Mr. Herbert Spencer says : "Beyond ques- 
tion, in respect to mechanical appliances, the Americans 
are ahead of all nations." 

From this brief material survey, what do we learn? 

I. That we have in this country the natural basis for the 
greatest empire in the world. There is no prospect of the 
consolidation or the expansion of the Empires of the old 
world. On the other hand, after the failure of the most 
gigantic attempt at disunion, an attempt which was born 
of the system of human bondage — a national peiil, which, 
thank God, has been forever removed — there is no ])r()spect 
of the dismemberment of this Empire. Tlie civil war, 
instead of splitting the nation asunder, knocked out and 
destroyed the wedge. The union of States, one and indi- 
visable, was cemented as never before by frateinal blood. 
The nation came forth from the smoke and carnage of the 
rebellion, with a new and indestructible consciousness of 
unity. But one people can occupj^ this vast domain which 
we call our country, a people acknowledging one central 
government, bound together by a common love of freedom 
and of free institutions, jiartakers of a common increase 
and prosi^erity, and sharers of a common glorJ^ 

]I. Secondly, we learn that our population is increasing 
with greater rapidity than that of any other nation. No 
small per cent of this increase is due to immigration. It 



was not until 1840 tliat the tide began to set in strongly. 
The facilities for reaching our shores had been previously 
too meagre and too expensive. More immigrants are re- 
€eived now in any single year, than in the whole decade 
previous to 1840. From that year to 1880, a little more 
than nine millions had changed their homes from the old 
world to the new, fiftj^-five per cent of whom were British, 
and thirty-three per cent of them of German extraction. 
The stream continues Avith an increasing, rather than a 
diminished volume. Some years, more than three-quarters 
of a million of arrivals are registered. Tlie attractions of a 
free and j^rosperous land are making themselves felt more 
and more among the oppressed and restricted millions of 
the old Avorld, while the expellent forces of other nations 
continue to exist and operate with little abatement of power. 
All the social and political agitations of Europe mean in- 
creased emigration to America. Already there are more 
English speaking people in this land than exist in all the 
world besides ; and it is said that " Germans only want one 
thing — money enough to come to America." This sug- 
gests one of the most serious problems which confront us, 
whether this vast incoming foreign population, of different 
languages and customs and religions, can be assimilated, 
Americanized, moulded into a homogeneous people under 
the influence of our free institutions. If the influx was less 
rapid, there might be no fear of the capacity of the nation 
to digest and absorb into itself this foreign' element. It is 
the quantity that excites the uncertainty. If our popula- 
tion increases at the same rate as of late, it will number in 
eleven short years, at the close of this century, 100,000,000, 
of whom 20,000,000 will be foreign born. And yet this may 
be only the beginning; the 20,000,000 only the flrst iiistal- 



nient, tlie avani couriers of vast populations yet to come 
to us. The nation is yet in its infancy. Yet, somehow, 
such is our faith in its infant powers, or r^her, perhaps, I 
should say, such is oui" confidence in the providence and 
purpose of Almighty God, that we go on singing : 

" I hear the liead of pioneers of nations yet to be, 
The first low wash of waves where soon shall roll a human sea; 
The rudiments of empire here are plastic yet and warm, 
The chaos of a mighty world is rounding into form." 

III. Thirdly, we learn from the merely physical survey 
of our country that this nation has already come to be the 
most i)rosperous and joroductive nation in the world. In 
1880 our agricultural products amounted to the fabulous 
Slim of $2,626,000,000, and our manufactures to the still 
more fabulous sum of 14,440,000,000. The total wealth of 
this countiy in I860 was estimated at 18,430,000,000, while 
that of Great Britain amounted to $:^2,500,000,000. In 
thirty years this nation had outstrij^ijed the mother country 
in point of wealth, her wealth being swollen to nearly 
$"60,000,0()0,()00, while that of the United Kingdom had 
advanced to less than $44,000,000,000. 

Mr. Carnegie, an Americanized Englishman, saj's in 
language which seems wildly enthusiastic: "The Yankee 
Republican could buy eveiy acre of Great Britain and hold 
it as a pretty little Isle of Wight to his great continent; 
and after doing this, he could turn round andpaj" off the 
entire national debt of that deej^ly indebted land, and yet 
not exhaurst his fortune, the pioduct of a single century. 
What will he not be able to do ere his second century 
closes ? Already the nations which have played great parts 
in the' world's history grow small in compaiison. In a 
hundred years they will be as dwarfs, in two hundred 



mere pigmies to this giant; lie the Gulliver of nations, 
they but Liliputians who may try to bind him with their 
spider threads in vain." 

This country is already the cotton producer of the 
world. If it is not already, it is destined soon to be, with 
its 1, 500,000 square miles of arable land— the granary of 
the world. And if our mining interests continue to 
develop, of which there seems no reason for doubt, we 
shall be the treasurj^ of the world. Moreover, it should 
be noted that the vast wealth of this nation is not confined 
to comparatively few hands as in other countries. There 
are no proprietors of vast landed estates which have de- 
scended from father to son, and few millionaires among us. 
The cry of the alarmists that the rich are becoming richer 
and the poor are becoming poorer is utterly without founda- 
tion. There is no nation on the face of the earth in which 
there are so many land-owners and. property-holders in 
proportion to the population as here. 

As the opi3ortunities of fortune are more favorable and 
numerous in this country than anywhere else, so the wealth 
of the nation is more equally distributed. Statisrics prove 
that nowhere are the people so well clothed, so well housed, 
and so well fed as in free America. In Enrope the number 
of bushels of grain annually consumed per head is 17.66; 
in America, 40.66. In Europe the number of pounds of 
meat annually consumed per head is 57.50; in America, 
120.00. The best fed nations of Europe, viz.: France in 
the matter of grain and England in the matter of meat, 
fall below our own country. The opportunities of industry 
here, and the rewards of industry, the wages of labor, 
exceed those offered in any other land. 

I do not mean to say that there are not suffering and 



liardsliip and poverty among our j't'ople, tliongli in too 
manj^ instances they are tlie resnlt of improvidence and dis- 
sixmtion ; bnt I do mean to say, that nowtere on earth is 
comfort so widely diffused, the necessaries of life so readily 
obtainable by honest effort, and even wealth so easily acces- 
sible, as under "the stars and stripes." If there were 
needed any other argument to prove this, and to prove the 
general prosperity of our citizens, the fact that the annual 
savings of our people far exceed those of any other people, 
and amounted in a single year to §1,050,000,000, would be 
sufficient. " 

I have dwelt thus far only ujion the material develop- 
ment and prosperity of our countiy during the century 
that has passed since the adoption of the Constitution. I 
need not say that such piosperity, great as it seems, is of 
an inferior quality ; that the true greatness of a nation is 
not estimated by its bulk or the number of its peoj^le, and 
the highest develupment is not that which can be reckoned 
in dollars and cents. If this was all the nation had to 
show for a century of existence, the record wouJd hardly be 
worth the writing or the repeating. But it will be seen 
that there is a higher development and a nobler lu'ogress, 
which not only have contributed in no small degree to this 
material growth and enlargement, but which constitute our 
truest national wealth and glory. 

Let us see what has been done in the line of general edu- 
cation, and philanthropy, and religion ; what i^rogress has 
been ^made in the diffusion of intelligence and culture 
among this growing peoi:)le ; to what noble uses its rapidly 
accumulating material resources have been consecrated. 
For, as Mr. Lowell said at the Harvard Anniversary, 
"Material success is good, but only as the necessary pre-. 



iiminniy of better things. The measure of a nation's true 
success is the anioinit it has contributed to the thought, the 
moral energy, the intellechial liappiness, the spiritual hope 
and consolation of mankind." 

It is well understood that the wise founders of this 
Republic saw clearl}^ that j)opular government must rest 
upon the intelligence of the people, and so they made im- 
mediate provision by general taxation for popular educa- 
tion. The school-house was built into the foundations of 
the Republic, as a vital part of its existence and essential 
to its stability. The far-seeing fathers felt as another ha& 
said, that, "upon no foundation, but that of popular edu- 
cation, can man erect the structure of an enduring civiliza- 
tion. This is the basis of all stability, and underlies all 
progress. Without it the State architect builds in vain. '^ 
And so they took the matter of education, from the firsts 
into their own hands. They did not leave it to the option 
of the people, and much less did they leave it to the con- 
trol of the church. Poj^ular government demanded popu- 
lar education. That to them had all the force of an axiom. 
The hand that wielded the mighty X)Ower of the ballot 
must be controlled by intelligence. The right of private 
judgment must be accompanied by the enlightenment of 
the judgment that possesses the right. Almost before the 
Pilgrim fathers had completed their log cabins for the shel- 
ter of themselves, they had built the school-house, and 
appointed the school-master for the education of their 
children. We are told that only six years after the settle- 
ment of Boston, four hundred pounds were approi3riated for 
the founding of Harvard College, which was, of course, at 
first, little more than a common school. "This sum was 
greater than the entire tax levy of the colony for the 
year." ^y— 



A different policy was inaugurated bj^ the aristocratic 
first settlers of Virginia. Twenty years later (in 1656) Sir 
William Berkelej^, the Governor, wrote: i' I thank God 
there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall 
not have tliem these hundred years. For learning has 
brought heresy and disobedience and sects into the world, 
and printing has divulged them and libels against the best 
government, God keep us from both." 

Just so far as these different policies have prevailed, 
they have produced different types of civilization. The 
one is aristocratic, and is hostile to the very idea of pop- 
ular government. The other is democratic and lies at the 
foundation of all successful popular government. The 
free schools of America are not only its glor}^, but they are 
its safety, and the money expended for their support is the 
wisest investment which a free government can make. 
The number of schools of various grades in the,country is 
estimated at 179,884, and the army of teachers at 273,000. 
The annual expenditure for school purj^oses in all the 
States amounts to more than $90,000,000. New York 
alone expends $11,000,000 annually upon the education of 
its children. Great Britain spends only $33,000,000 for 
education, and at the same time spends $144,000,000 for the 
support of its army. The nations of Europe spend seven- 
fold more for the maintenance of their standing armies 
than for that of their school systems. The idea of the 
necessity of popular education has grown with the growth 
of the nation, and the new States of the West are expend- 
ing more for education jjer capita than the older States. 
This imi)ortant matter is left to individual States and 
^Communities. The general Government has assumed no 
control and taken no action beyond the gift of sections of 

18 



public lands, which amount to 78,000,000 acres. In the 
judgment of wise statesmen, it ought, however, in the 
interests of self-preservation, to take action looking to the 
more general diffusion of intelligence in States where cul- 
pable indifference or financial inability prevails. There is 
still an alarming amount of illiteracy in the country, 
esi:)ecially among the colored people, and the poor whites 
of the South, and the foreign-born population. But this 
is being slowly reduced. It is a remarkable fact that of 
the native-born population of the North only five per cent 
are classed as illiterate, and that is owing, undoubtedly^ 
in a majority of instances, to congenital imbecility. The 
higher schools of learning, academies, colleges, profes- 
sional schools and universities which carry education 
beyond the line which State patronage can legitimately 
reach, are founded and supported by personal or denomi- 
national generosity. That such schools exist in every 
State, and their advantages are offered to all of both sexes 
at a merely nominal jirice, speaks loudly for the estimate 
svhich is put in this country upon mental culture and pro- 
fessional training. Into these schools have gone uncounted 
millions of private wealth, and from them have flowed, as 
from perennial fountains, untold strength and blessing to 
the life of the nation. Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Van- 
derbilt Universities, Packer Institute, Vassar, Wellesley, 
Smith and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and the University of <"he 
State of California, which represent a foundation of from 
one to thirteen millions of dollars, and which bear for the 
most part the names of their generous founders, are the 
magniflcent frnits of this free soil and this later civilization. 
They are without a parallel in all the centuries that have 
preceded us. 



19 



I might speak of the 175,000 libraries of tlie countr}' into 
which more than 50,000,000 books iiave been collected, 
which are exerting an incalculable inflnencei|niK)n the intel- 
lectual and moral life of this i^eople, and of the nearly 
12,000 newspapers and magazines which issue from the 
American press, and which have a circulation of 82,000,000 
copies, and which in spite of the immoral tendency of a 
few, constitute one of the mightiest educational forces of 
the centur3\ The growth of the librar}^ and the news- 
paper in this country is simply phenomenal. Theie are 
few homes which have not their little shelf of books, and 
fewer still which are not reached by the ubiquitous news- 
paper. Ill seeking to supply the demand of an increas- 
ingly intelligent people, they have increased the intelligence 
which has called them into being. 

But I must hasten to allude to the progress of religion 
among us. Has the faith of the people kept pace with its 
accumulating wealth and its intellectual life? Has the race 
for wealth separated our people from God, and have the 
I'eligion of Christ and the church of Christ been outgrown 
or forgotten amid all this mental activity incident to the 
remarkable progress of the century in science and art, and 
all useful knowledge? It is sometimes asserted that this 
is so, and that the church of Clirist is to be left behind by 
the advancing thought and life and civilization which are 
bearing us onward. It would not be surpiising if amid 
the pressing demands of the material, the spiritual should 
have been overlooked ; if, in the conquest and development 
of a new world, the old taith should have received a tem- 
porary set-back ; if, in the influx of the religionists and 
anti-religionists of other nations, Protestant Christianity 
should have failed to hold its (nvn, I am glad that I can 

20 



speak with absolute certainty on this point, that while the 
activity and growth of Protestant Christianity among us 
during the century have not been all that could be desired, 
yet there is abundant occasion for devout thanksgiving to 
God; for it is a fact, proven by carefully gathered statis- 
tics, that the number of Protestant church meml)ers in this 
country has increased nearly three-times as fast as the 
population ; that while, at the beginning of the century, 
the average of communicants to the population was as one 
to fifteen, in 1880 it was as one to five, and that while one 
hundred years ago there was one ordained minister to everj^ 
2,400 people, there is now one to every 700, if they could 
only be settled and equall}^ distributed and fastened down. 
There are now 92,000 houses of worship of all denomina- 
tions, which are capable of accommodating about one-half 
of our population, and are estimated to be worth in the 
aggregate upwards of 8350,000,000. This vast sum has 
been raised, not by State endowment or patronage, nor by 
forced assessment, but by the voluntary contributions of 
the people, so that there are few villages of anj^ size to-day, 
in our countr\\ that have not some place of worship ; 
though, in the rapid settlement of the West, we cannot tell 
how man}' destitute villages tliere may be next week. In 
a word, then, the professing Christians connected with 
Protestant churches in the United States number over 
12,000,0o0 to-day, showing that Christianity has a wider 
and a stronger hold upon the heart .of America than ever 
before, and that the kingdom of God is making progress 
among us more rapidly than the kingdom of worldliness 
and of material power. It is safe to say that three-fifths 
of our entire population are under the direct influence of 
the Christian church — Protestant or Catholic — of whom 



21 



four-fifths are Protestants. It should be added that our 
own lionored denomination is second to none in the pro- 
gress whicli it has made, and in the enlargeiuent wliich God 
has given it. One hundred 5^ears ago, which was the birth 
year of Dr. Judson, our pioneer missionary, we reckoned 
70,000 communicants ; to-day, so remarkable has been the 
favor of Clod, and so abundant have been our successes^ 
that we number not less than 3,000,000 church members. 

In this estimate of the century, there would be a sad 
omission if there was not some allusion to the growth of 
the benevolent s[)irit, which is a vital part of our growing 
Christianity. As the wealth of the nation has been in- 
creased, the occasions for its charitable and holj^ uses have 
been greatly multiplied, and to some exte]it recognized. 
No one will pretend to sny that all has been done in this 
direction that ought to have been done, or that the spirit 
of generous and intelligent consecration has now become 
as prevalent and dominant, as it ought to be, in the hearts 
of the people, even in the hearts of Christian i)eople. But; 
we may well thank God that the appeals, which have been 
more in number than the days of the. century, have been 
so heartily responded to. It would be utterly impossible 
to make any estiuiate of the aggregate benevolence. God 
alone has ke[)t the recoi'd. We only know that the poor 
have been relieved with an ever open hand; that charitable 
institutions of every name have been opened; that free 
hospitals and asylums for every class of unfoitunates have 
been everywhere established; that cities destroyed by lire 
and by earthquake have been generously rebuilt; that 
plenty and comfort have been nuide to follow close upon 
the heels of famine and pestilence, in addition to the vast 
amount of money that has been contributed for the erec- 



2i 



tion of churches, and the endowment of academies and 
€olleges and seminaries of learning, so that oui' whole 
history is luminous Avith the records, and our whole land is 
filled with the imperishable monuments of that noble, sjaii- 
pathetic, unworldly, unseliish spirit that is born of our 
holy religion. And moreover, side by side with this beau- 
tiful and ever increasing benevolence at home, lias been 
rising steadily and spreading constantly that most unselfish 
and (shall I not say it) most Christian of all charities, 
which, in tlie ages to come, will distinguish the nineteenth 
century more than all other forms of i)rogress combined. 
I mean the interest in the work of the world's conquest fur 
Christ. For it was not until this centurj^, whose achieve- 
ments we are commemorating, was well u[)on its course, 
that that old apostolic spirit, long since dead, and then but 
recently born again in the mother country, crossed the sea 
like a heavenly emigrant, touched and fired the heart of 
Christian America, and sj^read from denomination to de- 
nomination. This new spirit, which seems like the revival 
of primitive piety in the churches, whose first articulate 
utterance was, this world, with all its vast resources and 
its increasing population, belongs to Christ, and must be 
won to Christ — now finds expression in an annual oft'ering 
of $5,500,000, a sum, indeed, averaging hardly fifty cents 
for each professing disciple of Christ, but which He has 
graciously accepted and marvellously blessed, and which 
will be more and more increased as -the Christians of this 
nation come to recognize the divine purpose in the discovery 
and development of this country as related to the redemp- 
tion and progress of the human race. 

Now, for all this wonderful growtli and prosperity, this 
success which has attended our enterprise and skilled 

23 " 



indiistiy. thi.s UM[);ii'alleled i)rogiess in all that constitutes 
national greatness, I think there is generally in the hearts 
of this people a sense of gratitude to l^lmighty God. 
Altliougli the age is much given to materialism, to the 
gloriiication of self, to the deification of human skill and 
intellect and prowess, there is a prevailing disposition to 
recognize a superhuman Power and Providence in our 
State and national blessings, in all evidences of prosperity 
and progress, in the terrible discipline and the glorious 
victories through which we have passed, in the general 
and, I may say, unanticipated success which has attended 
the experiment of popular government on this continent, 
during the first century of its existence. Not unto you, 
oh, honored and immortal men, who laid the foundations 
of this great Republic; not unto you, oh, illustrious 
names, who drafted its matchless Constitution; not unto 
you, oh, eminent statesmen, who have been its expounders 
and defenders; not unto you, brave soldiers of a hundred 
bloody fields, wdio sacrificed so much to preserve this 
Union and free it from the curse and menace that was 
resting upon it; not unto you, industrions millions, ye 
toilers wifh brain and hand, who have developed the 
resources and monlded the life of this gi-eat people; not 
unto any of us, or all of us, American citizens, living or 
dead; but first and above all to Him, onr fathers' God and 
our God, be praise, who has given wisdom, and courage, 
and strength, and skill, and care, and favoring providence, 
and success, and greatness. "Know ye that the Lord, He 
is God; it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; 
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." 

But, brethren, with our congratulations and rejoicings, 
let us not be blindly satisfied with the past and the present. 



or ignore the inalienable responsibilities of citizenship. In 
this centennial year, and on this Thanksgiving Day, we 
stand face to face with national perils, which will not down 
at onr bidding. There are some who hear in the various 
iigitations of the hour the mutterings of a coming temj^est. 
There are some who fear that the experiment of a hundred 
years may be approaching its end, who doubt whether the 
ship of State, of which it may still be said, that 

"Humanitj% with all its fears, 
With all tlie hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breatliless on thy fate," 

<;an survive the shock of the might}" waves that seem im- 
pending, who tremble lest this fair Republic may soon be 
dismembered and go to pieces in a stormy sea. Personally 
I have no serious apprehensions. The lessons of the past 
are not lost, but are full of encouragement as to the strength 
of these old timbers and their power of endurance, when 
riveted and bolted together by the unyielding pui'pose of 
the Almighty. The agitations of the present seem small 
in comparison with the deadly strife out of which the 
nation has safely come ; but thej^ are too serious to be 
ignored, and may be fiaught with much evil, if they do not 
menace the existence of the Republic. All good citizens, 
of whatever party, are called upon to be true to the funda- 
mental princif)les of our government, to be watchful 
against the encroachments of evil in whatever quarter, and 
to stand firmly for the rights of maH and the authority of 
law, both human and divine. 

Local government should not be permitted to fall into 
the hands of notoriously wicked men, who defy law and 
moral sentiment, shelter criminals if they are of their 
party, and openly prostitute their sacred trusts to selfish 

25 



and criminal ends. Every open violation of law should 
lead to speedy arrest ; every arrest shonld be followed by 
impartial trial; and every trial, if resulting in conviction, 
should be followed by penalty. Men should be elected as 
executors of the laws, who will not be the shelterers of 
law-breakers. We need less " pigeon hole" and more peni- 
tentiary, otherwise social and political life will become 
more corrupt, and the criminal will go to his crime with 
unblushing face, and no fear of the consequences. When 
party leaders are unscrupulous, and wicked men are put in 
office, the end of good government is defeated. There 
are good men enough in every city to secure good local 
government, and save the laws from being a laughing- 
stock, and the offices from being a part of the party 
machine, if they would only awake from their indifference, 
and break away from party slavery, and unite to bring it; 
about. 

Methods should be provided to secure, in all the land, in 
city as well as village, North and South, an honest ballot, 
free from fraud or bribery or intimidation. On the purity 
of the ballot-box depends, to some extent, the stability of 
our free institutions. An electoral bill should be framed, 
so fair in. its provisions and so certain to secure to every 
rightful voter the privilege of suffrage uninfluenced, that 
every respectable legislator Avould be ashamed not to vote 
for it, and no Governor would dare to veto it. Every man 
who refuses to'vote for a specified period, should be de- 
prived by law of a freeman's highest prerogative, and be 
branded as a nuin without a country ; and every man who 
sells his vote, and any man who buys it, should be not only 
imprisoned, but disfranchised forever. The registration 
lists should be keiot i^ure of the names of dead men, and of 



men worse than dead. Every voter should register his 
name under oath before eacli election, and every I'alse reg- 
istration should be punished as perjury. The crime of bet- 
ting on elections for sums large or small, which has rapidly 
increased in this country, should be fearlessly punished 
and stopped. An}' intimidation should be put down at the 
point of the })ayonet, and every citizen protected in his 
right by the whole power of the government. The condi- 
tions of suffrage should be uniform and rigidly enforced, 
viz.: intelligence, freedom from crime, inherited citizenship 
or citizenship acquired by years of residence as long for 
the un-American as for the American. The holiest place 
in the land, next to the sanctuary and the home, should be 
the polling-place, where the will of a sovereign people seeks 
to express itself in harmony Avitli the will of God. 

The power of the saloon must be crippled and destroyed, 
and tlie untold injury which it works must be circum- 
scribed more and more until it is reduced to the minimum. 
The saloon has too long had a controlling voice in our 
politics and dictated our legislation. It brings forth 
nothing but waste, misery, pauperism, insanity and crime, 
a wretched brood. It is the foe of the home, of social 
order and purity, of the church of Christ, of national 
prosperity, and of civilization. As another has said: 
"Civilization must destroj^ the liquor traffic, or be de- 
stroyed by it." It is a sad thing when the result of any 
election is virtually the coronation of pim. Is it not time 
that all good citizens should band themselves together 
against this enemy of our common humanity, and fight it 
through to the glorious end? 

Supervisory, not to say restrictive, laws with reference 
to immigration need to be speedily enacted and enforced. 



It has been said: "When tlie founders of the American 
Repnblic stretched ont tlieir liands with a hospitable 
welcome to all the oppressed of earth, it was in a large 
measure because Rousseau had taught them to believe in 
the inherent goodness of man. They took it for granted 
that the oppressed, no matter who thej' were and whence 
they came, were deserving characters, who needed only 
the liberty which the new Republic offered them, to grow 
to the full stature of civic, moral and intellectual man- 
liood." We have long since, in sorrow^ learned tlieir 
mistake. 

\Ve acknowledge that many c)f our best, noblest, most 
substantial, most patriotic citizens have been adoj^ted, 
Have sought on these new^ shores a freedom and an oppor- 
runity which they have intelligently prized. But immi- 
gration, as it lias increased in quantitj^ has deteriorated in 
quality, until we are receiving paupers and criminals, the 
scum and sewage of all lands, in some instances sent to us 
})y organized assistance and authority. Our privileges and 
our institutions are too sacred and valuable to be entrusted 
to such hands. The task of reforming, and assimilating, 
and converting into manhood such material, is too severe a 
strain upon oui- nation s life. A consular insi^ection needs 
to be inaugurated which shall diminisli the amount of im- 
migration and improve its character; otlierwise theproi^hecy 
of Herbert Spencer, that through the intermingling of 
different nationalities, "the Americans may reasonably 
look forward to a time when thej^ will have x^roduced a 
civilization grander than any the world has known," will 
have little prospect of fullilnient. 

Again, our common schools must be sacredly guarded, 
and the public funds be forever withheld from sectarian 



28 



uses. Around this citadel is to be fought the next great 
battle in this nation. God grant that it may be a bloodless 
one ! Already our public school system, the palladium of 
onr liberties, is officially condemned by the highest au- 
thority in the Church of Rome. Education is to be trans- 
ferred away from the control of the State to the control of 
a foreign x>i"it'sthood, and then the public funds, contrary to 
all precedent and sacred principle and constitutional law, are 
to be demanded for the support of these priestly and sectarian 
schools. Said a Catholic Bishop in St. Patrick's Cathedral, 
in St. Louis, on November 13th : " We have a right to that 
money of the State. It belongs to us, and we should have 
it." He added : " We educate probably 600,000 at an ex- 
pense of at least $9,000,000, which ought to come from the 
State to us." It is ours to replj^ kindly but firmly : " Not 
so ; you utterly misunderstand the nature and limitations 
of Free Government. No taxes can be levied and no public 
funds used for the support of religion, either yours or any 
other man's. To do so would be to violate the fundamental 
law of our Constitution, and to annul the compact under 
which the nation lives." Few Catholic parents have any 
desire for the change, preferring for their children the bet- 
ter education which is freely provided by the State. They 
can be whipjied into it only by the lash of ecclesiastical 
authority. We must stand bj^ those who bravelj" protest, 
and stand by the principle which involves everything that 
is dear to us in this land of civil and religious liberty. 
Says a Avriter in the North American Medieio, ''The sun- 
dering of our free school system, the dividing of the public 
funds, the recognition of sects in the administration of the 
Government, would be the death-blow of the Republic, 
would mark the failure of the American experiment." 



29 



I hardly need saj% in conclusion, that we need to illus- 
trate in ourselves, and cultivate in others, a nobler and 
broader manhood, which shall l)e equal to, the demands of 
a larger nation and a new century. The true greatness of 
a nation consists in the greatness of the manhood which 
it develops, and the progress of a nation should be marked 
by the progressive tj-pe of character which it pi(>duces. 
The American of to-day stands on a higher plane than the 
American of a century ago, both of advantage and of influ- 
ence. He ought to be a nobler, a more fully developed 
man. Virtue that exists in a worthy ancestry, and is not 
transmitted and developed, is a national possession of doubt- 
ful value. Self-government politically ought to lead to 
self-government personally, and a people that are sover- 
eigns ought to learn more and more to exercise their sov- 
ereignty over themselves. The development of a century 
of national life, ought to be seen in the development of the 
life of the people. A wealthier and a stronger countr}'' 
should have a richer and a stronger life. An advancing 
civilization must carr}^ humanitj'^ with it, the only material 
on wdiich civilization can work. Knowledge grows from 
more to more : does life, character, manhood grow from 
more to more i Our fathers contended with great problems 
and solved them ; they grappled with grave perils and 
throttled them. There were giants in those days. Are 
there greater giants in these days % What has the century 
done for American manhood? How many layers has it 
put around its heart of oak ? How many feet has it added 
to its altitude? Does the new century find the wisdom, 
the strength, the manhood that it needs ? Is it not pos- 
sible that this age is a more compromising and self- 
indulgent age than the age in which the fathers lived; 

30 



that there is less iron in its blood, less nuiscle in its prin- 
ciple, less clearness in its moral vision, less erectness and 
manliness in its attitude and pose; that it may have been 
enervated and weakened by the Inxury which the century 
has brought to it? Is it not possib'e tliat our great need 
to-day is a higher type of American manhood, a sterner 
self-control, a mightier resistance of the corrupt passions 
and blinding ambitions of human nature, which have such 
sweep and sway, a higher regard for law, truth, x^i'inciple, 
and personal obligation, a nobler si)irit of self-denial for 
the public good, and a deeper reverence for all things holy 
and divine ? Heereu, the Greek historian, says that 
" Greece fell when things sacred ceased to be sacred.'^ 
Religion, with its self-restraints and its holy incentives, is 
the basis of morality, and character, and true manood. 

I am aware that instruction in this department belongs 
not to the State, but to the church. To our churches, 
then, made fully alive to the responsibility which rests 
upon them, the nation looks, expecting them to give 
stability and nobility to the new civilization, to arouse the 
American of to-day to nobler heroisms, and to transmute 
the moral lessons of the past and the gratitude of the 
present into a truer, x^urer and larger life. "God accounts 
those mercies forgotten," it is said, " Avhich are not written 
with legible characters in our lives." Not in joyful hymn, 
nor in eloquent oration, nor in written history, nor in 
monuments of stone with inscriptions of brass, does a 
nation's gratitude lind fittest expression, but in the love of 
truth, in the doing of righteousness and charity, in a 
better faith in God and service for humanity. In Old 
Testament history, when God had given to Joshua a signal 
victory over the city and inhabitants of Ai, an altar was 



31 



-erected in commemoration of the great event. Then God 
commanded to be inscribed upon this altar, not an account 
of the victory, which we should have judged appropriate, 
but a copy of the law of Moses, "whereby He plainly 
showed that the best way of remembering the mercy was 
not to forget the law." As God's law, which is man's 
righteous rule of life, and God's name, which is the ex- 
pression of his holy character and love, are widely rever- 
enced and increasingly loved among the American jDeople, 
we may believe that the blessings of the past century will 
be continued and multiplied unto us and unto our 
children. 



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